Pipiltzintzintli -- Salvia divinorum Epling & Javito

Though teonanacatl has been rediscovered and identified, there still remain other plants classed with it in the colonial sources as possessed of divine (or Satanic) attributes that defeat our efforts at interpretation. Both Sahagun and Juan de Cardenas refer to a plant that they call respectively poyomatli or poyomate,(18) grouping it with other hallucinogens. Its identity is unknown. In his Medicina y Magia Dr. Aguirre Beltran cites other references to this plant in the unpublished records of the Inquisition. He likewise supplies numerous references to a second plant that belongs in the divinatory group, a plant the name of which is variously spelled in his sources but that he thinks in the original Nahuatl should be pipiltzintzintli.(19)

Its identity, too, is unknown. The plant grew in the area where ololiuhqui flourished; but whereas ololiuhqui is the seed of a morning glory, the seed of pipiltzintzintli is never mentioned. It is called an hierba, never an hiedra or bejuco like the morning glory. There was a macho and an hembra, or male and female varieties. It was cultivated.

All of these attributes fit the hojas de la Pastora that the Mazatecs generally use as a divinatory plant. In September 1962 we gathered specimens of the hojas de la Pastora, and they were found to be a species new to science: Epling and Jativa named it Salvia divinorum. (20) Among the Mazatecs I have seen only the leaves ground on the metate, strained, and made into an infusion. The colonial records speak of an infusion made from the roots, stems and flowers.

But this is not incompatible with our information about Salvia divinorum: the Mazatecs may confine themselves to the leaves of a plant that has the divine virtue in all its parts. I suggest that tentatively we consider pipiltzintzintli, the divine plant of pre-Conquest Mexico, identical with the Salvia divinorum now invoked in their religious supplications by the Mazatecs.

Of divinatory plants in use today that could have been used in Middle America before the Conquest, we have had experience with two: toloache, presumably the seeds of Datura meteloides Dun., and colorines, the seeds of Rhynchosia pyramidalis (Lam.) Urb. Though I know of no references to colorines in colonial sources, I think that they are present in the famous Tepantitla fresco where strings of seeds and mushrooms are falling from the hand of Tlaloc (Editor's note: pictured above in the opening graphic), and where some of the seeds are red and black, with the hilum distinctly placed in the red held."(21)

On the slopes of Popacatepetl the sacred mushrooms are still taken with colorines. It is vital that the hilum be in the red field; if it is in the black patch, it is the toxic seed of Abrus precatorius L., also called colorinw and much used for beads by the Veracruzanos.